Archive for October 2011

Important Paraguayan Archive (1810s-1860s) Online: Curiosities and Gems

"Supreme Dictator" Gaspar de Francia rails against John Parish Robertson
for the "height of the most barbaric and brutal piracy" in 1815.

Dr. Richard Alan White, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington D.C. and noted historian of Paraguay found himself in a curious, frustrating dilemma when he gave copies of very important archival documents back to Paraguay last spring. To resolve it, rather than just up the ante, he went all in.

When White was doing his dissertation research on Paraguay, he came across a valuable collection of documents housed at the University of California--the Bareiro Collection. Someone has transcribed the entire collection and pdf-ed them. In celebration of Paraguay's bicentennial earlier this year, he gave the National Archive in Asunción copies of all 5000 documents as part of an attempt to increase the Archive's resources. Almost immediately, people got ahold of the documents and bound them and sold them for up to $170. (This is more than the average monthly salary in Paraguay.)

To circumvent this, White has uploaded the entire collection to a mediafire site. This can be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world, and reflects a commitment to putting history in the grasp of ordinary Paraguayans.

I've only begun to look through the Bareiro Collection and have already found several documents that are germane to my not-not-not-my dissertation topic (the Robertson brothers' years in Paraguay, their business dealings, their banishment by Gaspar de Francia, and their writings on the whole experience decades later). The transcriptions of hand-written entries in official record books preserves archaic [mis]spellings ("Yndios" instead of "Indios,""Gefe" instead of "Jefe") and orthographic curiosities (like the practice of writing abbreviations in a vertical manner) and even the 1814 order by which the governing body endowed "the Citizen José Gaspar de Francia with the title Supreme Dictator of the Republic...for five years" (a title which he held onto until his death in 1840).


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Thank you, Governor Scott: Is Anthropology Practical? (Academia's Image Problem)

"Do you want to use your tax money to educate more people who can't get jobs in anthropology? I don't."
Governor Scott, at the Northwest Business Association in Tallahassee.

Edited to Add: My favorite rebuttal to Governor Scott so far.

A group of students at the University of South Florida responded by creating a beautiful interactive presentation, showing how anthropologists are at work in Florida. Take a look at This is Anthropology.

Earlier this week, Florida Governor Rick Scott made repeated comments about anthropology and public funding for universities. The debate has made the rounds (I learned about it from Gawker's Florida's Governor Declares War on Useless Degree) as academics and anthropologists have tried to defend anthropology, the "study of humans."

Governor Scott is only saying what many others also believe.

To be clear, I think Governor Scott is wrong (and I suspect that targeting "anthropology" is a political move on his part), but I also think he has raised several important questions. Others have done an excellent job explaining that anthropologists are employed in the tech and science fields Governor Scott says are useful. Others have pointed out that, in fact, studying the way people relate is actually quite important for people who care about politics, economics, war, religion, TV shows.

But I want to get to two uncomfortable questions raised by Governor Scott's comments:

1. Why is a "liberal arts" education useful?

2. Why have we (anthropologists, others in liberal arts) not communicated the usefulness of liberal arts?

A "liberal arts" education is useful and practical because it teaches people how to analyze arguments and how to write convincingly. The ability to write a two-page memo that is coherent, persuasive, and grammatically correct is one of the most critical skills someone can learn in college. This gets people hired (cover letters). It convinces companies to expand sales into a new market (business plans). These skills are useful in all areas of business, engineering, IT, marketing, construction, industry, commercial agriculture, pharmaceuticals.

The ability to understand and analyze arguments (to notice the underlying assumptions, to infer conclusions) is the key to be able to determine whether a business plan is solid, whether a proposal for a high-speed train in Central Florida will work, and whether we're being sold on an emotional or partisan appeal, rather than an honest and rational one. Arguments (a.k.a. sensible ideas) aren't just for lawyers. They're for everyone.

We should take seriously the fact that Governor Scott is only saying what many others also believe. I think we, in academia, have a branding and marketing problem. (Incidentally, this is just the kind of thing anthropologists--who study how people behave--are quite good at.) We have not done a good job communicating to our constituency. It's not obvious why "liberal arts" is a good thing (and the phrase itself is confusing) and the whole idea of "going to college to discover yourself" assumes a lot of privilege already (many people cannot afford the luxury of "discovering themselves"--they need to be able to support aging parents, themselves, their children). And so, I think it's important to explain to students just exactly why it's practical that they learn to argue and write.

Governor Scott's comments only make it clearer that we need more people who are trying to address touchy and timely issues through blogs or through their classrooms.

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